Patrick Berry gives us an absolutely delightful Saturday May 3 puzzle (answers) complete with six, count 'em, six, trick clues! This is approximately 6.0 more than we're used to seeing on the toughest end of the crossword week and that surprise made it even more fun.
Is this a rebus puzzle? I suppose it is but it won't show up as one on my stats site because there are no letter or symbol substitutions. Should it?
The image is ELEANOR of Aquitaine, whom I like to think of as the Oprah of the Middle Ages. She might not appreciate that analogy but she held power most kings could only dream of. If you've seen the play The Lion in Winter you know all about her. Some of it may even be true.
Did you know EL GRECO was tutored by Titian? I love clues like that where the point is not do you know some trivia but, for example, there's a famous person, obviously a painter, whose name you can get and by the way here's an interesting little tidbit about him. In addition, we get a useful tip on being a cat burglar — keep the NOISES down! Damn, that is good advice. I'll be sure to remember it next time.
Robin and I will be out of town over the weekend so that means you'll be treated to another guest writer here at The JimH Crossword Blog. This time I tapped KarmaSartre because either I liked some of the comments he's posted or maybe I just like his snazzy nom de web. It's like some triple portmanteau you can tease apart in different ways. Anyway, he's going to be doing the write up on the Sunday puzzle so tune in for a completely different point of view. He's new to blogging so go easy on him with your comments. After all, I may be tagging you next! Ah, what the heck. Rip away. After all, pity makes suffering contagious, apparently.
I asked him for a brief bio and he suggested that, as is my wont, I just make stuff up. With nothing at all to go on other than my inerrant intuition, let me introduce KS with another Mini-Biography of Someone I Don't Know Anything About.
KarmaSartre was forced to grow up early. As a child, the only bedtime book his great uncle Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre would read him was Being and Nothingness which left him permanently psychologically scarred. His only escape was in the world of crosswords where the neat meshing of Across and Down promised some sense of order in his otherwise bleak existential life. Wandering for years through the mountains of Tibet sharpened his mind to the point where even Patrick Berry puzzles came easily to him, sometimes without even having to read the clues. KarmaSartre spends his non-puzzle time scratching grids in the sand with a sharp stick.
